Moriarty's greatest weapon was the disorienting illusion he could weave. Even with Lloyd on his guard to the utmost, he couldn't be certain he could avoid its effects entirely. But he knew one thing for certain: there was only one situation in which Moriarty was undeniably real.
When Lloyd defeated himself.
"I was too obsessed with eradicating demons. That's why I gave you the opportunity to destroy me. But Moriarty, haven't you been just as obsessed with me? Isn't everything you've done meant to turn me into the monster you've always wanted me to be?"
Only when Lloyd lost would Moriarty emerge from his woven illusions and stand before him in the flesh, mocking him to his face.
And that moment had come.
When Lloyd lost, it would also be his last chance to win.
"The monster has come for revenge, Moriarty!"
Secret Blood detonated within his veins. His blood, not yet cooled, began to boil once more. His twisted, pinned arm bent back at an unnatural angle, its hand clamping around the nail sword as it tore free of every restraint. The blade swept through the air with a succession of thunderous cracks.
At the same time, Moriarty tightened his grip on the nail sword and drove it forcefully into Lloyd's chest. The calm in his eyes ignited once more. Lloyd did not look away. He stared straight into the blinding light before him, allowing it to burn away every trace of darkness in his eyes.
Authority—Raphael.
No matter how much vitality Lloyd had left, no matter what schemes he might still have up his sleeve, Moriarty had now seized his consciousness completely and dragged him into that madness-inducing illusion.
He had won.
Moriarty couldn't help laughing as he thought this. After all the probing and scheming, after all their endless attempts to outmaneuver each other, he had emerged victorious in the end.
The storm churning across the sky had formed a vast, wildly spinning vortex, like a whirlpool torn open in the heavens. The two airships circled and twisted around each other, their distance steadily shrinking.
Lloyd spared the Heading for Dawn only a brief glance. In weather this atrocious, forget boarding the enemy vessel—even its cannon fire would struggle to find its mark. There was no point in expecting its crew to accomplish anything.
A bone-chilling sound rose with the surging gale. Lloyd swung his blade, severing the flesh that had crept toward him. Blood sprayed into the air, mingling with the howling wind and torrential rain.
Scarlet flesh was slowly coiling around the entire airship like a mass of tentacles. It resembled some crimson plant growing without restraint, its grotesque tissue forcing its way into every crack and crevice, gradually swallowing the Riesenbach whole.
Everywhere Lloyd looked, the surfaces were stained with patches of flesh. Guided by the nerves controlling them, the growths twisted the materials they covered, wrenching the entire airship out of shape.
This was the power that came with demonic transformation. Driven by Secret Blood, demon hunters began to break free of the constraints of the human form, advancing toward the twisted existence of demons.
They abandoned every last shred of their humanity to become one of the monsters.
Authority—Ayanar.
Endless red threads wove a web-like environment, and the same grotesque transformation was taking place throughout every corner of the Riesenbach. The flesh bursting beyond the limits of the body grew ravenously, assimilating the surrounding materials and incorporating them into itself. Like creeping vines, it spread over every surface. Blood coursed through the interconnected tissue, while hardened flesh fused with steel, forming a skeletal framework that supported the misshapen body.
Under the burning power of Secret Blood, the entire Riesenbach was gradually becoming part of that body.
It was a replay of the Night of the Holy Advent. During that burning night, and throughout the countless long days and nights that followed, the demon hunter who bore the name Ayanar had fought the demons in precisely this fashion. He had completed his demonic transformation, his proliferating, twisted flesh spreading across the entire Stagnant Sanctuary.
Grotesque appendages pierced the corpses of the dead, draining the last remnants of nourishment from their bodies. They fell, rose again, and repeated the cycle until every abomination had been slaughtered.
Lloyd's gaze hardened. He hadn't expected the Ayanar demon hunter to become so troublesome after transforming, but then again, it made sense. He had never had a clear measure of what a fully transformed demon hunter was capable of. The demon hunters of the Old Order all carried Silver Shackles. The more power they acquired and the further they transformed into demons, the faster the lethal holy silver inside them melted away, eventually killing the life that had dared to cross the forbidden threshold.
That was the Old Order's bottom line.
The New Order, however, did not care about such things.
They had already stepped into the forbidden, becoming fiends that haunted the mortal world.
This only strengthened Lloyd's resolve. The Riesenbach was an airship bound for Hell, and he would not allow a single passenger to remain in the warmth of the mortal world.
His nail sword cleaved through a wall ensnared by the writhing flesh. The entire Riesenbach had already been twisted into something grotesque. There was no longer any need to bother with doors or corridors. He had to find the core of this demonic transformation. Otherwise, no matter how much flesh he severed, it would stubbornly grow back to life.
And the transformed Ayanar hunter was not the only danger aboard the Riesenbach. Other demon hunters had undergone the same metamorphosis, and then there was Moriarty, who had been watching him from the shadows all along.
As Lloyd considered this, a thunderous crash erupted overhead. The ceiling shattered, its jagged edges wreathed in flames. And beyond the falling debris came a deadly flash of steel.
The mottled nail sword was covered in fine blood vessels, as though it were a fusion of living tissue and metal. It reminded Lloyd of the Old Era Divine Armor. That, too, was an abomination of steel and flesh, a grotesque creation stitched together from two incompatible substances.
There was no time to dwell on it. Metal tore through the air with a shrill, ear-splitting roar. A demon hunter with a horribly distorted face came crashing down, wielding the monstrous nail sword. The timing of its attack was so precise that Lloyd had no chance to defend himself.
A ghastly white flash descended. A razor-sharp gash split open his faceplate, ran through his breastplate, and continued all the way to the floor. More cracks spread across the divine armor, and scorching blood poured relentlessly from within.
Lloyd retreated in a sudden, desperate step. The transformed demon hunter was far more terrifying than he had anticipated. Yet even as he was wounded, the flesh began to heal, and the shattered divine armor seemed to possess a life of its own, reforging itself before his eyes.
The sword flashed again, its rough surface reflecting the hazy glow of the flames.
The demon hunter had already seen every move Lloyd was going to make. With Secret Blood surging through its veins, the Shangdafeng demon hunter, having crossed into the forbidden, could perceive the future far beyond the reach of ordinary sight.
In its eyes, Lloyd's movements became countless overlapping afterimages. Every action seemed to follow a discernible pattern, every possibility laid bare.
"Try this!"
Lloyd hurled the nail sword in his hand. Its blade, heated until it glowed red, hurtled toward his opponent.
To the Shangdafeng demon hunter, the trajectory of the thrown sword had long since been determined. This was merely the repetition of something it had already witnessed in the future. The two nail swords collided, and Lloyd's attack was effortlessly deflected.
But then a thunderous gunshot rang out.
As he threw the sword, Lloyd had seized a shotgun and fired at the enemy before him. Even when one could see the future, certain attacks were still difficult to evade.
The scattered pellets carved red streaks through the air, tearing into the Shangdafeng demon hunter's body. It made no attempt to block them, taking the full force of the shot head-on. Its advance faltered for an instant, but after that brief pause, it charged again.
It had already foreseen Lloyd pulling the trigger. But for a demon hunter in its current state, a gunshot like this could hardly inflict fatal damage. It wasn't that it had failed to defend itself. It simply didn't care about Lloyd's attack.
The blade flashed closer once more. Under the force of the next blow, the charred floor beneath them shattered. Both combatants plunged straight into the sea of fire below.
Lloyd rolled as he landed and scrambled to his feet, but before he could swing his sword again, searing pain erupted from his wounds.
Twisted flesh began forcing its way through the divine armor, spreading little by little, like flowers sprouting from cracks in stone. Scarlet lotuses bloomed across the armor's surface, their alluring petals concealing flesh that burrowed deep into Lloyd's body like roots, gradually assimilating him.
Lloyd coughed up blood as tendrils of flesh wound themselves around him.
It was the sword. The nail sword encrusted with flesh. The growth clinging to it belonged to the Ayanar demon hunter.
As its flesh spread, the entire Riesenbach was being assimilated into its body. In a sense, Lloyd was fighting inside an unimaginably vast demon. The proliferating tissue was like a seed, carried into his flesh by the blows of the other demon hunters, where it took root and began to grow.
In mere moments, countless scarlet lotuses had blossomed across the stone-like divine armor. Lloyd tried to move, but the flesh, twisting like vines, had bound every joint in his body.
Beyond the sea of fire, one figure after another rose to its feet and approached him.
Countless red threads descended from the darkness overhead, connecting those grotesque figures one by one. For a moment, even Lloyd couldn't tell whether they were being driven mad by Moriarty's Authority or whether Ayanar's power had taken control of their bodies.
Or perhaps both.
"So that's where you are, Moriarty?"
Lloyd murmured. At the same time, the divine armor covering his body shattered, along with every scarlet lotus that had bloomed upon it. The roots embedded deep inside him were torn out along with the armor, as though they had been ripped free by a sword. Countless tiny punctures and scars appeared across his gaunt body, and blood poured uncontrollably from them.
Leaning on his nail sword, Lloyd looked more like a monster than ever.
Such wounds would have killed any ordinary man. But as Secret Blood boiled within him, they would heal in the space of a few breaths.
Lloyd had become a monster, too. Just like these demon hunters, he was now a creature that refused to die.
[Secret Blood Awakening: 47%]
The cold, mechanical voice echoed through his mind. Then even that voice began to blur, swallowed by the searing agony spreading from within his body.
A faint red glow emerged beneath Lloyd's chest, as though a miniature sun had become his heart, pounding furiously inside its blood-soaked chamber.
He was nearing his limit. Once he crossed the final threshold, even Lloyd had no idea what he might become. Perhaps things would unfold as he had been taught within the Order: he would transform into a frenzied demon, only to be killed when the holy silver inside him melted away completely.
There was no time to dwell on that now. Once free of the divine armor, Lloyd's speed surged. With Secret Blood continuing to boil within him, his enemies were growing stronger, but so was he becoming more monstrous.
He plunged into battle with the demon hunters in the sea of fire. Their eyes were vacant, as though the flames of their fury had already consumed the souls beneath their skins, leaving behind nothing but the shambling husks of the dead.
Lloyd had always been a violent man. Beneath those somewhat timid eyes lurked a rage that could scarcely be restrained.
His nail sword hacked through the enemy with brutal force. His swings grew faster and faster until, at last, they whipped up a rising whirlwind within the confined space.
Sparks and flames were caught in the wake of his blade, tracing a chaotic web of light through the air.
Against inhuman monsters like these, swordsmanship had lost all meaning. There was no room left for technique or finesse. All Lloyd could do was swing harder, strike faster, and keep swinging until nothing stood before him.
Steel clashed against steel. Bursts of sparks erupted between Lloyd and the demon hunters, until what remained in his hand could scarcely be called a blade anymore.
It was nothing more than a warped, red-hot length of steel, its edge riddled with notches.
Lloyd had never been in such a wretched state. Wounds covered his body, every one of them deep enough to be fatal, some exposing the bone beneath. He had no idea how much blood he had lost. His clothes had been hacked down to ragged strips, soaked with sweat and blood, revealing the battered, dying body beneath.
Yet the twisted, glowing steel in his hand had reduced the demon hunters before him to mangled wreckage. Their powerful bodies shattered and came apart under his relentless assault.
One by one, they sank helplessly to their knees, like slaves bowing before their sovereign. Their heads struck the ground as the sea of fire and the creeping flesh swallowed them whole. Then they fell silent forever.
Lloyd continued forward.
He was like the Grim Reaper himself. No matter how powerful a life might be, it could never escape the fate of death. And if anyone dared to defy that fate, Lloyd would personally see it carried out.
The proliferating, twisted flesh had already spread across the outer hull of the Riesenbach. From the Heading for Dawn, it was easy to see that the airship's surface was covered in grotesque growths. A gigantic, misshapen tumor had emerged at its stern, as though the entire vessel were gradually abandoning its mechanical nature and transforming into a living organism—a colossal whale swimming through the sky.
The flesh within Lloyd's field of vision was changing as well. It was as if a towering tree had taken root inside the Riesenbach, its flesh branching into a labyrinth of roots buried deep beneath the decks.
Lloyd kicked open the final door. A blast of scorching air struck him in the face.
The entire engine room was bathed in crimson light. Countless tumors and roots covered every surface, while twisted flesh coiled over the blazing boiler. Embedded within that mass of tissue, like a jewel set in a grotesque crown, was an expressionless head. Its hollow eyes reflected nothing but the burning flames.
This was the Ayanar demon hunter responsible for everything. Just as Lloyd had suspected, the engine room was the ideal point from which to spread its control throughout the entire Riesenbach.
But what about Moriarty? What was that cunning serpent doing now?
As Lloyd wondered, Moriarty appeared in the crimson glow, smiling at him.
A chill swept through Lloyd's heart. Instinctively, he closed his eyes to avoid Moriarty's gaze.
And at that very moment, several nail swords pierced his body.
They drove into his joints, tore through his flesh, and pinned him to the floor.
No. He should have killed all the other demon hunters by now.
From the corner of his eye, Lloyd saw countless red threads supporting the ruined bodies. One after another, the corpses moved like marionettes, obeying commands from an unseen puppeteer.
Yes, Lloyd had killed them all. The ones attacking him now were being controlled by the Ayanar demon hunter, whose flesh had assimilated their dead bodies and was using them as weapons.
And that wasn't all.
"Looks like I've won after all, Lloyd Holmes."
In the crimson light, Moriarty's smile grew more sinister.
Amid this hellish battlefield, surrounded by mangled corpses and the grotesque figure of Lloyd, Moriarty was the one who looked most like an ordinary human being. Yet beneath that perfectly normal face lurked a terror capable of driving anyone to madness.
"You… used me…"
Through the agony, Lloyd finally understood his mistake. Ever since he had stepped aboard the Riesenbach, the two of them had been probing and scheming against each other, each trying to anticipate the other's next move.
Moriarty knew that Lloyd understood the conditions required to activate Authority—Raphael. Therefore, whenever Moriarty came face-to-face with Lloyd, Lloyd would instinctively avoid meeting his gaze. And the instant Lloyd lost sight of his opponent was the perfect moment for Moriarty to strike.
Lloyd's vigilance had become his weakness. The nail swords, positioned long in advance, descended from different angles, inflicting devastating injuries with perfect precision.
His joints were locked by the blades. His body was pinned through and through, and enormous wounds gaped across his flesh. He had no choice but to prioritize keeping himself alive rather than attacking.
Had he lost?
No. Not yet. His head had not been severed, his heart had not been destroyed, and Secret Blood was still boiling within him. He still had a chance to strike back.
Without hesitation, he unleashed the surging power of Secret Blood, driving it toward the forbidden threshold. If he could break through that final restriction, nothing would be able to hold him back.
But all at once, the surging Secret Blood turned cold.
A nail sword plunged into Lloyd's chest, piercing his heart.
He raised his head. Moriarty stood right before him, smiling.
Lloyd stared at him in disbelief. Then, almost immediately, he found his own naïve thoughts laughable.
This was a battlefield where life and death were decided. An enemy would never leave him the slightest chance of survival. The moment he had stepped into Moriarty's trap, his death had already been sealed.
After all, his enemy was none other than James Moriarty—the loathsome bastard himself.
"It seems I've won, Mr. Holmes."
Moriarty spoke gently as he twisted the hilt with force, grinding Lloyd's heart to pieces bit by bit.
Death was coming. Yet Lloyd's reaction surprised Moriarty.
He had expected Lloyd to weep, to scream, to beg for mercy. But Lloyd did none of those things. Instead, he lifted his head. The flames burning in his eyes died down, and his gray-blue irises reflected Moriarty's face.
Lloyd began to laugh.
The sound came out hoarse, given the state of his injuries, and thick blood accompanied his cough.
"What are you laughing at?" Moriarty asked.
"So you were right, Moriarty. We really are alike."
Lloyd ignored the question and continued speaking as though to himself.
"We really are alike. So sometimes, even your 'disorder' can be predicted. After all, you're me. And there's no one I understand better than myself."
His words stirred a faint unease in Moriarty. Lloyd had been under his control from beginning to end. Even the ambush aboard the Riesenbach had been effortlessly neutralized. Yet now, this dying man was making him feel something he had not anticipated.
Fear.
Something was about to happen. Something beyond his control.
"We're too much alike. A little neurotic, arrogant, narcissistic… and a little insane."
Lloyd lowered his eyes and raised a hand to grasp the blade that pierced him.
"So if I were in your position, if I had just defeated a formidable enemy, with my rotten personality, I'd be absolutely delighted. I wouldn't hide in the shadows and watch him die helplessly. No. I'd want to stand right in front of him, watch him draw his final breath with my own eyes, and laugh in his face without the slightest restraint."
"So, Moriarty, I'm dying. A man on the verge of death wouldn't make you wary, would he? After all, you've already won. A victor should have the composure of a victor. The magnanimity. The mercy."
"So, Moriarty…"
"That means the you standing here right now must be the real you, doesn't it?"
A sudden chill enveloped Moriarty. In that instant, he realized what Lloyd intended to do.
But then he could no longer see Lloyd.
More precisely, he could see nothing at all. His entire field of vision was swallowed by a terrifying darkness. Then agony tore through him, and the thunderous shriek of steel rang beside his ears.
A savage wound burst open across Moriarty's head.
Though Authority—Raphael had already seized Lloyd, in the final instant before his consciousness vanished, he still obeyed his instincts and swung his sword. The nail sword cleaved into Moriarty's skull from the temple downward, shattering bone and cutting through the burning eye along with it.
Clutching his bloodied face, Moriarty stumbled backward, howling in agony. As his pain intensified, the sea of fire surged ever higher. It burned through the engine room, swallowing both struggling men and dragging them into the furnace.
Lloyd remained frozen in the final posture of his swing, his body motionless as though he had become a statue. His consciousness grew heavier and heavier, sinking into darkness. Strangely, despite the scorching inferno surrounding him, he felt as though he were descending into a frigid abyss beneath the sea.
The air carried the scent of the ocean breeze.